Firstborn
by celestial1
Summary: Looking back on it, she wondered if she was being punished for the sin of pride. Because Judith Abbott had pride in spades that day. Rated T for sensitive subjects, nothing explicit; please read author's note!


**author's note. **Back when Caroline's books first came out, I got into an interesting discussion with other doll collectors about how Caroline came to be an only child. Birth rates being what they were in the 1800s, that's somewhat of a historical anomaly, and there are several theories as to how it happened. I started writing this story then, and it's given me a hard time, but it was fairly cathartic to write (I actually made myself cry a few times, and you guys, I do NOT cry). Rated T for sensitive subjects: pregnancy loss, and married people doin' what married people do. And Caroline's barely in this story at all but I love the Abbotts so, so much I couldn't not share it with the world.

* * *

1798

Looking back on it, she wondered if she was being punished for the sin of pride. Because Judith Abbott had pride in spades that day, sitting tall in the wagon piled high with their possessions. The village they were moving to was so small it didn't even have a name yet, but it was situated close to the lake and her John would build the beautiful ships that would sail it. They'd been married six months, but an observer would be forgiven in thinking they'd been married only six hours, so obvious was their devotion. Every few minutes John would sneak a glance at his bride, and she knew it. She was so beautiful he could hardly believe his luck.

As they rolled down the muddy ruts that passed for the streets of the village, Judith sat a little taller. She smoothed the material of her dress over her body - she hadn't begun to show yet. She hadn't told John yet, either. She was waiting for this day.

"Here we are, love." John stopped the horses, stepped down from the wagon, and swung Judith down with a flourish. "Home sweet home."

Judith carefully picked through the mud and ducked inside the little log cabin. "It's perfect," she said. The single room was dim, but three windows on the long wall facing the road would let in enough light for her to sew or read. There was already a fire going, she only had to hang her kettle. The chimney drew perfectly, as she'd known it would - there was nothing John couldn't do with the right tools and his own two hands. "We will be so happy here."

John came up behind her, putting his arms around her slender waist. "We will," he agreed. He pointed to the various corners of their new home. "I was thinking the table there, by the windows, so you'll have enough light for your work. On the wall, I'll put up some pegs so you can hang your dresses. And here, in the back corner, that's where our bed'll stand."

A little smile curved Judith's lips. "And the cradle? Where shall that go?"

Astonished, John spun his wife around, holding her by the shoulders. It was worth waiting for this moment, to see the look on his face. She had never felt so loved. "The cradle?"

Judith was laughing, and crying a little too. "The cradle, John."

* * *

She had only a very few weeks to enjoy her happiness.

Sweeping out the cabin's floor one morning, after all their things had been moved in, Judith felt an odd cramp in her belly, as if her monthlies had started. No, she thought, no no no no. She hoped and prayed that it was nothing, but the cramp was followed by another, then another, and then she started to bleed. Only a trickle at first, but it was enough. She knew.

Their little village didn't have a doctor yet, but there was a woman a few towns over who served as a midwife, so she had some knowledge of such things. "It happens sometimes," she told Judith, who lay curled on her side on the bed. She hadn't stopped crying yet, and she wouldn't for another three days. "It's nature's way, there's no telling why. Hard luck that you caught it on your first."

Judith didn't say a word, only looked past the stranger to her husband in the doorway. How disappointed he'd be.

"Give her time," the midwife said in a low voice to John as she passed. "A month or two, at least. But give her something to keep her mind off it. And," she added, looking into the yard at John's half-completed cradle, "put that away for a little while."

It was the midwife's suggestion that gave John the idea to bring Judith into the shipyard. Ostensibly she was there to handle the accounts and the correspondence - she had enviable penmanship and a fine head for numbers - but she also had a calming presence on the men who worked there. John had had problems with fighting among his workers, and even the stealing of tools, but with the addition of an angelic blonde woman with perfect manners and a dry wit, suddenly they were on their best behavior. They soon learned to tame their coarse language and they didn't spit on the floor, at least not more than once.

And the best news was, just shy of their first anniversary, Judith conceived again. She was more cautious this time, more reserved in her joy. John didn't say much, as was his way, but he retrieved the pieces of the half-finished cradle from his workshop and set to sanding them smooth. He had begun to join the rockers to the main body when the bleeding started once more.

* * *

1800

John Abbott woke with a start to realize that his wife was not next to him. The late November night was so cold that even indoors, he could see his breath. Where was she? Then out from the yard, he heard the crash of splintering wood.

Without stopping for shoes, he made his way outside on the frozen ground. He took in the scene in an instant. He'd put the cradle in storage after the third disappointment, but Judith must have found it. Her eyes wide and her face grim, she grunted as she raised the axe over her head and brought it down on the wooden cradle once more.

The front of Judith's shift was streaked with blood.

Gently, John approached the woman with the axe and took it from her hands. The cradle was ruined now, good only for the woodpile, but he didn't care about that. "Come inside," he urged her. "You'll catch cold."

Judith sank to her knees, and then she started to cry. "I'm so sorry, John," she wept. "I ruined it. I ruined it for you."

He knelt alongside her and took her into his arms. She was so cold, she was shaking. "You never said," he whispered. How she could have borne this alone, he didn't know. "You never told me, this time."

"I thought..." she began. "I thought if I didn't say anything about it, if I didn't want it too much - I thought -" She looked up at the bright moon, her chin quivering. "But I did want it, John. I did."

"I know, love." He held her tighter, pressed her face to his chest. In all his life he'd never forget the feeling of her tears on his shirt that cold, cold night. "I know."

* * *

A few days later, when it was over, Judith turned a hard face to her husband. "You shouldn't have married me," she said bitterly. "You should have a wife who can give you a child."

John pushed his plate aside and took his wife's hand. She pulled away, turning to look out the window. "I didn't marry you for a child," he said. "I married you because I couldn't live without you, plain and simple."

"I'm not the wife you deserve."

"Fair enough. You're better." She didn't return his awkward grin. "If we are not to have children, so be it."

"You will grow to resent me," Judith said, turning hard eyes on him. "To hate me."

That stung John, but he concealed it. "I could never."

"I don't believe you."

"I know." He wanted to touch her, to embrace her, but he feared she would fly apart in his arms like glass. "But someday you will."

* * *

For a year, they lived together more like best friends than husband and wife. Truth be told, it was a good year. They walked together to the shipyard every day hand in hand, as if they were courting again. They sang and told jokes and flirted and teased. Judith did suffer intense pangs of envy when Martha wrote with news of her own new baby girl, but she put her longing aside and traveled to Upper Canada to help with the new arrival.

Sometimes John Abbott would wake in the night and look at the sleeping form of his wife - so beautiful, so dearly loved - and he'd be nearly overcome with desire. To lay next to her and not to touch her was an exquisite form of torture. And he knew there were men who would force the issue, who would claim what they viewed as a right. (He knew, too, that there were men who would seek comfort elsewhere. As if there was a woman of high character or low who could hold a candle to his Judith.) But he'd remember how her hopes had been raised, only to fall a little farther each time, and not for the world would he put her through that again.

In January of 1802 the long awaited event occurred - that is to say, Abbott's Shipyard secured the contract that would establish their reputation in the business. Their hard work would be recognized; they could hire more workers and build a bigger shed. It was the moment John Abbott had been working towards for the past ten years. They celebrated with a bonfire, and music, and a little hard cider, and then a little more. And returning home that night, tipsy with alcohol as well as joy, John and Judith Abbott fell into each other's arms. It wasn't until many weeks later that they were awakened to the reality of what they had done.

* * *

"I am sorry." John finally broke the silence that hung like fog that chilly March morning. "I am so, so, so sorry. I wouldn't have done this to you for anything."

Judith's hands were shaking. She'd spent most of the morning violently retching; there was no more putting off telling him. "Please," she said. "Let's not talk about it any more. I'm sure nature will take its course."

But a funny thing happened: nothing.

The early months, Judith kept waiting for the familiar signs. The cramping, the first sign of blood. She ran to the privy at least ten times a day to check. Nothing. Perhaps nature was intent on prolonging her agony - she would have preferred to have it over quickly.

But spring gave way to summer, and there was no sign of it.

She was reluctant to let her dresses out at the seams. What was the use, when she'd have to take them all in again. But there came a day when her dresses strained over her body so badly she could hear the threads popping, and she couldn't squeeze into her clothing without the seams marking an impression in her flesh. One day, out on the lake with her husband, she felt the quickening, a tiny fluttering like wings in her womb. She wept bitterly for it, still believing that the life within her was doomed.

John wanted to make another cradle, but Judith forbade him. She wouldn't have such a thing in her house.

* * *

That October was unseasonably warm, or perhaps it just seemed so to John - sweat dripped prickly into his eyes, plastered his linen shirt to his back, as he tried not to listen to the sounds from the house. (Judith could scream like a banshee, he thought fondly.) They had sent him away - his wife, his mother-in-law and the midwife - but he couldn't concentrate on shipbuilding. So he furiously split logs, enough for the coming winter and well into spring.

He knew well enough where this kind of thing could lead. He remembered, at six, being ushered into his parents' bedroom to see his mother, cold and white, laid out on the counterpane, a wee bundle tucked unmoving in her arms. He never found out whether it was a brother or a sister she had labored vainly to bring into the world. He learned quickly enough, by way of a maple switch or the back of his father's hand, there were questions a child shouldn't ask.

_Please God_, he begged, bringing the axe down again and again,_ keep them safe. I'll never ask for anything again. Just keep them safe._

The cries coming from the house had stilled - cold fear clenched like a fist in his gut - then another, shriller cry rent the air. The baby. _The baby._

John nearly bowled over Mrs. Livingston, the new grandmother, as he tore into the house. "Have you been here this whole time?" she chastised. "I told you we'd send for you when it was over."

John shouldered past her. "Let me see her, let me see my wife."

Judith was limp on the bed; she was pale; she was exhausted. Strands of blonde hair had escaped the braid and formed a corona around her face. She looked nothing like the trim young woman he had married four years ago, but John had never found her more beautiful. "Are you all right, love?"

Judith leaned into his strong arms. "I'm fine," she said. "Just a bit tired."

"And the child?"

The mother looked across the room, where the infant screamed lustily in the midwife's arms. "A girl," she said.

"A girl," John repeated. "Let me see her."

Watching her husband take the yowling bundle awkwardly into his arms, Judith Abbott had one of those odd flashes of clarity, the intuition as old as womankind. She knew, though she couldn't say how, that they'd never conceive again (though there'd be stolen moments undercover while the babe slept in her cradle nearby). That she'd worry over every cough and every fever but that the child would live and thrive. She would never cease to mourn what was lost, but the pain would lessen, and while there would only be this girl, it would be enough.


End file.
